Forgotten Nü Metal, 1999-2002

by Chuck Eddy
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September 23, 2013

After Korn's third album, Follow the Leader, topped the U.S. album chart in 1998, and especially when Limp Bizkit's second, [Significant Other], repeated that feat a year later, the writing was on the wall: For the next three years, rock radio would be overrun by moshpit mooks trying to rap or otherwise get somehow industrially funky with all the grace of a zebu in a Hummel figurine shop. Some nitwit named it "nü metal," and the dumb name stuck.

Here's a whole bunch of such historically footnoted outfits, most of whom scored with either one radio hit or a handful during the window in question, then either slowly or quickly faded from both airwaves and public memories. A few had connections to the big and powerful: Adema were fronted by the stepbrother of Korn's Jonathan Davis; Powerman 5000 by Rob Zombie's little brother. Deadsy got helped out by both Davis and Bizkit's Fred Durst; Godhead (oops, gODHEAD) were the only band signed to Marilyn Manson's Posthuman Records.

Other distinctions: Kittie are all women; My Ruin were led by white female rapper Tairrie B, who had put out a decent solo album that nobody bought in 1990. Vanilla Ice, who made the nü metal move on his aptly titled album Hard to Swallow, had made a somewhat more profitable white rap record in 1990. And speaking of being hard to swallow, Methods of Mayhem were fronted by Tommy Lee from Mötley Crüe.